“I know Chris. He isn’t this reasonable in real life. TV makes him more reasonable.” #campaignchronicles

The live televised debate on Wyoming PBS for the U.S. House of Representatives was the high point of the 2012 campaign.

I knew that it would not change anything. It was on November 1 and election day was on November 6. It was too late for anything that happened at the debate to change anything. Additionally, Representative Cynthia Lummis is a well polished politician. I was not expecting any mishaps.

Most of the people who would watch, the few that would, were people who had already made up their minds. For some, this would be their first look at the race, but they would be few.

Either way, the race was not a high profile one and everyone involved knew what the result would be on November 6. Even me! Yes, I was well aware that I would lose. I had a long-term strategy…it just was not part of my stump speech.

By the end of November, I would be out of a job and that long-term strategy no longer mattered.

My goal for those 90 minutes was to put in a a solid performance. For me, that night was not about 2012, but 2014 and beyond. I wanted it to be something that I could point to as I tried to generate support for my next race.

I felt that I achieved my goal and was very happy with my performance. Lummis played it pretty safe, which is all she needed to do.

The real story of the debate ended up being the three minor party candidates. I will write more about them at a future point. They really added a certain level of entertainment to the debate. While they allowed me to seem like the only non-extremist in the group, they also became a distraction. The debate ended up being about them.

Nate Oman, a law professor at the College of William and Mary made the following observation about the debate:

“I know Chris. He isn’t this reasonable in real life. TV makes him more reasonable. He may be one of the three people in America for whom this true,” wrote Oman.